Letters in the Editor's Mailbag.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Clinic's motive: money

When I read of the July 16 closure of the All Women's Health Services abortion clinic, I was jubilant! The closure should mean that fewer unborn babies will be cut up and vacuumed out of their mothers' wombs in Eugene. (If you don't like the sound of that, you have yet to face the realities of abortion.)

It took the closure of the AWHS abortion mill for at least one of its employees to realize the motives of the AWHS board of directors: making money. This closure was a "'business decision," according to the memo the employees received - see Bayla Ostrach's July 22 guest column, "Closure of clinic leaves huge void."

The purpose of this abortion clinic was not to provide high-quality "health services" or to ensure that women have a right to do whatever they want to do with their bodies. Its purpose was making money off women facing crisis pregnancies. The clinic directors apparently saw no conflict in collecting their money, killing their babies and then closing up shop to save a buck.

I don't see any compassion for the clients in the clinic's closure - except for the "almost 40" women Ostrach mentions who could not keep their abortion appointments with these money-hungry abortionists that weekend because of the closure. Maybe those mothers will now have time to make the choice to take responsibility for their pregnancy and care for the child they now carry in their womb (and will forever carry in their heart, no matter what "choice" they make for their unborn child).

MARY GENOVESE Junction City

Initiative covers all

Reporter Tim Christie's excellent July 25 article indicates the critical importance of the health care issue that will be presented to Oregon voters this November. While our corporate-dominated political system has its captive Congress "deliberating" over whether to get some relief for our seniors in the purchase of the overpriced prescription pharmaceuticals, the Oregon Health Care for All initiative makes prescription drugs available to every Oregonian, young or old, as a part of the inclusive initiative. Resident seniors and even those hundreds of thousands of children currently not covered for any medical care will be covered by the plan.

As Christie's article points out, there is little doubt that the health insurance industry and probably the pharmaceutical companies will dissemble and equivocate in order to protect their countless billions of dollars of profits. They will lie and tell us how our current system is so much better than the Canadian or the British health care systems.

Those countless Oregon residents who have no coverage or who are struggling to get any kind of medical help should not be deceived. Nor should any of those of us who are now paying outrageous premiums, co-payments, Medicare deductibles, sky-high prescription drug prices, etc.

Vote "yes" for Measure 27 in November to get medical care, including prescription drugs, for all Oregon residents.

KARL SORG Eugene

Logging is increasing

Congratulations to Rick Gehrke (letters, July 27) for finding such an imaginative angle to vent his hostility toward the activists who fight to protect our national forests. Living in Roseburg, Gehrke should be (or is) aware that logging of old growth trees is increasing under the current administration - and while fires are raging all over the West, they are not the only destructive force threatening our forests.

There seem to be a great number of firefighters in this country, but there are not a great number of activists willing to leave their homes or offices to protect our forests from the other destructive force: the timber industry and the U.S. Forest Service that builds its roads with our taxes and then sells trees at a tremendous taxpayer loss. More than 95 percent of the original forests have been lost since this country was settled, and very little of that was due to fire.

But Gehrke and others like him can take comfort in the fact that Sen. Tom Daschle's sneaky rider exempting the Black Hills National Forest from environmental regulations is the tip of the iceberg for lobbyists and politicians who will try to capitalize on the fires this season. Many of us vividly remember the suspension of laws in the national forests in 1995, enabling massive amounts of healthy old-growth trees to be clear-cut under the guise of salvage logging.

In the event that Gehrke is actually out there practicing what he is preaching and fighting these blazes, I wish him the best of luck, and offer my sincere gratitude for helping to save our beautiful forests.

RICK GORMAN Eugene

Recall Coos commissioner

Coos County is at a crossroads. We can't afford to have county commissioners such as John Griffith who have no idea at all what "commonwealth" means and whose level of public discourse reaches a new low in an e-mail that resulted in his firing from the Ocean Policy Advisory Council by the governor.

John Griffith is unfit for public office and continues to prove his unfitness at every turn, insisting that his far right agenda be adopted by the county. Attaching us to a very questionable lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service sponsored by the developer-funded Pacific Legal Foundation out of Sacramento is a mistake of great magnitude. It reduces the people of Coos County to pawns in a larger battle and, at worst, makes us liable in the event the lawsuit fails.

During Griffith's two years, public input on decisions has been discouraged with the shortest legal notice given for important meetings. Postings on the county web site have presented the biased viewpoint of Commissioner Griffith and use inflammatory language to encourage anti-environ- mental sentiments - for example, promoting the simplistic notion that wetlands protection and restoration is simply choosing "swamps" over "productive farmland" while ignoring current science that recognizes wetlands as the most important single habitat for the nurturing of biodiversity and the provision of natural filtration in the hydrological watershed process.

The grass roots movement to recall Griffith is the breath of hope for the county. At last people are coming out of their doldrums and realizing the dangers of electing irresponsible ideologues to public office. My hope is that more Coos County residents will learn the facts and then sign the recall petition.

RICHARD F. KNABLIN North Bend

Arlie maligned

As employees of Arlie & Company, we are not surprised to see stories about our employer appear occasionally in The Register-Guard. What is surprising and disappointing to us is that many of these stories - especially those written by business editor Christian Wihtol - are unfair and just poor reporting. The July 25 story on Pine Grove Park is a case in point.

Wihtol implies there is something unusual about converting a lease-land manufactured home park to a land-purchase park. As is frequently the case in stories Wihtol writes about Arlie, he sites no evidence to back up this implication. Had he done just a little research, he would have learned that this is a nationwide trend, due to the down economy and low interest mortgage rates. In fact, the West Eugene Village Park recently made the same conversion.

Wihtol often editorializes in his news reports about Arlie. He uses words that convey his opinion, rather than a fact. His personal dislike for our company is evident. If he can't contain his personal feelings, someone else should write about our company. We are also tired of reading Wihtol's derogatory descriptors of John Musumeci. He clearly doesn't know John personally.

It's frustrating to have to constantly correct The Register-Guard's misinformation, caused by Wihtol's opinions, when we talk to people in the community, as well as to people interested in locating in our developments. We expect the Register-Guard to write stories about us - those stories should be written without editorializing. That seems like the least a community can expect from its daily newspaper.

LARRY E. REED

Director of development

KATHY COTTA, Property manager

and 12 co-signers

Arlie & Company Eugene

Penitence fights polio

For the past 32 years our "For Sale" signs have suffered every conceivable form of malice, vandalism and mischievousness. Not once in 32 years has anyone claimed responsibility - until one recent day when a 12-year-old Bandonian came into our office to pay for juvenile mayhem to one of our signs. We settled for $10.

I want to congratulate this young man for his penitence and to state that his money is going to help other kids. PolioPlus is a worldwide campaign begun by Rotary International to eradicate polio from the face of the Earth. Currently, with help from groups such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, every dollar donated is matched by $3. Because each dose of vaccine costs 50 cents, one Bandon child's honesty will soon be protecting 80 children from the ravages of polio.

If you are interested in learning more about Rotary International PolioPlus, please contact me.

FRED GERNANDT

David L. Davis Real Estate Bandon

Smoking hurts others

Dan Woodmark misses the point of Eugene's no-smoking ordinance (letters, July 24). There is one huge difference in smoking's effect as compared to the effects of other vices. If you drink or use drugs, you harm only your own body. When you smoke, not only do you harm your body, but you harm the bodies of everyone around you. And they have no choice. They have to breathe.

No one is saying you cannot smoke. They are saying you cannot smoke around other people in a closed environment.

If you want to kill yourself, go ahead. You do not have the right to place others, involuntarily, at the same risk.

By the way, I smoked fairly heavily from age 16 to 40, when I quit. I know what the addiction is and how difficult it is to stop.

MILDRED TREES Eugene

Hands off Social Security

I will be 90 years old on my next birthday. I remember well the stock market crash of 1929 and the depression of the 1930s. No one who lived through the depression will forget that it lasted into the 1940s.

The bear market of 2000 is far from over. No one can tell how long it will last. So I am dead set against messing with the Social Security system. And I shall remember well those national legislators who vote for privatization.

E. J. THROCKMORTON Florence

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